Scandals in Savannah

by Harper Lin

“What’s the matter?” he whispered.

  “What? Oh, nothing. I guess I’m still shell-shocked over you making this special appearance in my house and sweet-talking my parents the way you have. That’s a sneaky deal, Mr. White.” Becky poked the tie that was hanging down his broad chest.

  “That’s not it. When your father was talking about his crops, you got choked up. I could see it in your face.” Adam took her hands in his, and after looking to his left and then his right, making sure the coast was clear, he leaned in and kissed Becky’s cheek.

  Her heart skipped a beat, and her knees went weak.

  “I’ve got a long story to tell you,” Becky said. “But not tonight. Let’s have fun tonight. Let’s forget about tobacco and typhoid and even Mr. Gavin’s rash, which has probably also cleared up.”

  “You’re spinning some crazy yarns,” Adam said.

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Becky laughed happily.

  As soon as Lucretia appeared with a punch bowl of her sweet ambrosia, the party really started to swing. Teddy started a crazy game of charades just before a couple of his buddies and their gals came by. Two fellas who arrived stag quickly sashayed up to Fanny and were told every detail about the parties in Paris.

  Becky and Adam danced the black bottom with lightning speed and precision, as if they were made to dance together. Fanny jumped in with one of Teddy’s friends for a foxtrot while Judge set up the bar, bringing up the gin and champagne from the cellar.

  It was a swell time. As Becky chatted and danced and took a seat extra close to Adam, more people started to arrive, until it was a regular Fourth of July celebration. It was after she’d finished her second champagne cocktail that Stephen Penbroke walked into the house looking dapper and sly with his parents behind him. Becky smiled and waved.

  “Who is that?” Adam asked. He was sweating a little, making his hair curl across his forehead the way Becky liked it.

  “That is Stephen Penbroke. Mama was trying to fit me for a set of handcuffs to that mug. But I think you have put a serious dent in her plans.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Becky stood up and yanked Adam to his feet. “Come on. Let’s make with the introductions.”

  The boys were cordial to each other, shaking hands and quickly getting drinks. But it was obvious each knew what the other was thinking about Becky.

  Not seeing any need for a fire extinguisher or a bull whip, Becky slipped outside to have a cigarette. After a few gulps of air and the caress of a cool breeze, she was about to head back inside when Adam appeared.

  “It’s hot in there,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she replied.

  “So, what’s this story you have to tell me?” He stretched out his hand. She took hold, and they walked down the porch steps to a spot on the lawn just shy of the squares of light from the front door and the windows.

  Becky stood so close to Adam he was practically looking straight down, but the smile never left his lips. She quietly told him about her adventure while inside, Stephen pretended not to watch from the window.

  “Have you met Adam White?” Fanny asked.

  “Hello, Fanny. Yes. We just met,” Stephen replied.

  “He’s all wrong for Becky. She has a crush on him,” Fanny continued.

  “Sounds like you might, too.” Stephen took a sip of his drink then looked at Fanny.

  “And you’re sweet on Becky. From where I’m standing, we might be able to help each other,” Fanny said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I know where she goes, and I certainly know that her mother and father might be polite to him now, but he’s a Northerner and from a questionable family. He could ruin her reputation.” Fanny sipped her cocktail and batted her lashes at Stephen.

  “Is this something you learned to do during your stay in Paris?” Stephen smirked.

  “Maybe,” Fanny said.

  “So what’s in it for you?” Stephen asked.

  “Huh? Perhaps you don’t see that tall drink of water out there, but I do.” Fanny lifted her chin.

  “Well, Miss Fanny. Maybe we should meet for a drink some time.” Stephen clinked his glass to Fanny’s, and they both took a sip. “Care to dance?”

  “I’d love to,” Fanny gushed.

  Outside, the sun was setting on the tobacco crops as Becky continued to tell Adam about her dealings with Mr. Tobin and Leelee. Of course, his eyes were wide, and he begged her to never take such chances alone again, to which she crossed her heart and promised.

  “Next time, I’ll take you with me.” Becky stood on her tip-toes.

  Without saying another word, Adam took Becky’s face gently in his rough hands and kissed her full on the lips, taking her breath away. The full moon was the only witness.

  As you wait for book 3 of The Southern Sleuth series, catch up on Harper Lin’s other series by visiting her website.

  Read an excerpt of Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse, book 1 the Cape Bay Cafe Mysteries, at the end of this book.

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  About the Author

  Harper Lin is a USA TODAY bestselling cozy mystery author.

  When she's not reading or writing, she loves hiking, doing yoga, and hanging out with her family and friends.

  For a complete list of her books by series, visit her website. Follow Harper on social media using the icons below for the latest insider news.

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  A Note From Harper

  Thank you so much for reading Scandals in Savannah. If you were entertained by this Southern Sleuth mystery, please recommend it to friends and family who would enjoy it too. I would also really appreciate it if you could write a book review to help spread the word.

  If you like this series, you might also enjoy my other series:

  • The Cape Bay Cafe Mysteries: When Fran moves back to her idyllic beach town to take over the family café, she also develops a knack for solving bizarre murders. Each book includes special recipes.

  • The Pink Cupcake Mysteries: A new divorcée sells delicious cupcakes from a pink food truck, to the chagrin of her ex-husband. Each book includes cupcake recipes.

  • The Patisserie Mysteries: An heiress to a famous French patisserie chain takes over the family business, while using her status as a Parisian socialite to solve murders in high society. Each book includes French dessert recipes.

  • Secret Agent Granny: 70-year-old Barbara, a sweet grandmother—and a badass ex-CIA agent, is bored in retirement, until someone in her small town is murdered.

  • The Wonder Cats Mysteries: three witches and their magical cats solve paranormal murder cases in the mystical town of Wonder Falls

  • The Emma Wild Mysteries: a 4-Book holiday cozy series about a famous singer returning to her small Canadian town. Each book includes holiday dessert recipes.

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  Harper

  Excerpt from “Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse”

  Before we could even turn around to go into the house, the neighborhood busybody contingent flocked across the street, past Mike on his way to his car, and surrounded Matty and me.

  “Matteo, what happened?” “Was your dad sick, Matty?” “Francesca, dear, how did you find him? You were just walking home?” “What a fortunate coincidence, you finding him! He could have been out there God knows how long if you hadn’t happened along!” “What an unfortunate coincidence, what with your mother just passing!” “If you need any help going through his things, Matteo, I’d be happy to help. You know, I’ve lived just down the street there since your parents first moved in, back before you were even born.”

  The women’s voice overlapped and merged as they went on and on in their chattering and so-called condolences that all too frequently sounded more like thinly veiled insults and criticisms.

  “Such a tragedy, losing both your parents. And you so young yet!” “You’re all alone in the world now! Neither of your parents will be there to see you get married when you finally find the right girl!” “Oh, your children won’t have any grandparents!”

  At that point, I grabbed Matty’s arm and pulled him through the crowd toward the front door of Mr. Cardosi’s house.

  “Didn’t Mike want us to look through the house?” I asked loudly.

  “I can help you!” one of the women called.

  “No, no, we have it!” We were almost at the door.

  “I know where everything belongs! I spent quite a bit of time with Gino!”

  Matty and I whirled around. Matty had specifically said that his dad didn’t really socialize, so I wanted to see who was claiming to be his close friend. It was Mrs. Collins, a widow who lived across the street and two houses down, directly across the street from my house. She was rather well known for her, well, let’s just call them “exaggerations.” I narrowed my eyes at her, telegraphing a “back off” message. She stopped in her tracks at the edge of the group of women. Without taking my eyes off her, I pushed Matty toward the front door. I backed through it after him then slammed it and locked it for good measure.

  “Thanks for that,” Matty said as I stalked to the back door to lock that too.

  Satisfied that we would have no surprise or accidental visitors, I walked back to Matty. “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

  I glanced around and noticed the living room curtains were open. I didn’t put it past a single one of those women to walk through the flower beds and stare in, so I pulled the curtains closed, glaring through the window at the lingering crowd before I did. I walked through the first floor and closed the rest of the curtains before circling back to Matty, who was still lurking in the entryway.

  “That should keep them at least from being full-on Peeping Toms,” I said.

  Matty nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets as he looked around. “He’s really gone, huh?”

  The aggression I had felt toward the meddling neighbors vanished, and I was filled again with sympathy for Matty. I rubbed his upper arm with my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  He was quiet, staring at his shoes, then he looked at me. “So you found him?”

  I swallowed hard and stepped back, shoving my hands deep in my pockets. “Yeah,” I said as I nodded.

  “Did he look—? How did he—?”

  “I thought he was asleep,” I said softly, understanding what Matty was asking.

  “And you didn’t see any—”

  “No.”

  Matty nodded and looked at the ceiling with a sigh. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” I scoffed. I’d found his father’s dead body and called the police. That was nothing special. In fact, I wouldn’t have blamed Matty if he’d been angry with me.

  “Finding him, calling the police, saving me from the biddy brigade out there,” he listed.

  “I didn’t do anything special.”

  “Who knows how long he would have been back there if you hadn’t walked by?”

  I shrugged. “I’m sure it wouldn’t have been long.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Matty said. “Any time is too long.”

  I nodded sympathetically. My mother had collapsed in public and been whisked straight to the hospital. I couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to know that your loved one had been lying somewhere, dead, for an extended period of time.

  Matty took another deep breath. “Should we look around? See if there’s anything missing or out of place that Mike didn’t notice?”

  “We?” I asked, surprised. We’d been close growing up, but I had barely seen Matty since high school. Even though I’d been thrust back into his life, I didn’t expect him to want to share such a personal moment with me.

  He shrugged. “I don’t really want to be alone. And you’ve just been through the same thing. You’re not going to be all nosey and stuff, asking me a bunch of intrusive questions about how I feel about everything.”

  Well, that was true. The first days after I’d been home, several of my mother’s “friends” had come by, including some of the women from Mrs. D’Angelo’s Ladies Auxiliary. They supposedly wanted to express their condolences, but they’d seemed more interested in poking around the house, making snide comments and asking not-so-subtly about what had gone wrong with my fiancé. The people who came by and just wanted to express their condolences and sit quietly with me, drinking a cup of coffee while I stared into space, were few and far between, but they were much more what I needed as I struggled to process everything.

  “Okay then,” I said. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Living room?” Matty suggested.

  That seemed like as good a place as any, so we walked back to the room where we’d sat and waited for Mike what seemed like ages ago, even though it had only been an hour. We worked our way through the house, one room at a time. Matty looked around in each, surveying the contents. He told me stories about the objects in each room—souvenirs they’d picked up on vacation, the lamp he’d broken when he threw a baseball through the open window while playing catch with his dad, knickknacks that his grandparents had brought over from the old country, trinkets that had belonged to his mother. I already knew a lot of the stories from growing up with Matty, but I let him share them anyway. I knew how much he needed to talk about his dad without any pressure from me.

  We finished without finding anything that looked unusual and returned to the living room.

  “You want a cup of coffee?” Matty asked. “I know it’s getting late, but I think my dad keeps some decaf. Although I feel a little inadequate making it for the coffee queen here.”

  I laughed a little. “Whatever you have will be fine.” Yeah, I’d been around coffee my entire life and could tell a good cup from a bad cup by the look and the smell, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have manners. Besides, decaf or no, I knew I wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night.

  “All right,” Matty said as we headed toward the kitchen. He reached to open the coffeepot to put in the filter and grounds but stopped suddenly.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I didn’t notice before—the coffeepot’s half full. It looks like Dad was only on his first cup.” He pulled out the coffeepot and held it up for me to see.

  Sure enough, it was only partially empty. Matty paused, staring at the coffeepot. The visual evidence of his dad’s interrupted morning must have brought his grief back to the forefront. Not that I could blame him. He looked at it for a few more seconds then poured the coffee down the sink. He rinsed out the pot and started a fresh batch.

  We sat in silence at the kitchen table, each of us lost in our thoughts of our own parent’s recent passing. With a lot of people, that kind of silence might have been awkward, but with Matty, it felt completely comfortable. When the coffee was ready, Matty poured us each a cup and brought them back to the table.
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  “Sorry, no fancy designs,” he said with a sad smile.

  “It tastes just as good without them,” I said before taking a sip. It did not taste good. Clearly Mr. Cardosi hadn’t spent any more on his coffee than he’d absolutely had to. It was so bad, I actually wondered if there might be something wrong with the coffeemaker. I set my cup on the table. I’d had a lot of bad coffee in my life, and swallowed some of them down just to be polite, but I wasn’t sure I could manage it with this one.

  Matty put his cup down at the same time as I did. We sat for a moment, each staring at our cups.

  “We can just throw it out if you want,” he said.

  I couldn’t stop the laugh from bursting through my lips. Clearly Matty thought the coffee was just as bad as I did. “That might be a good idea,” I said.

  Matty took my mug and his cup over to the sink. He poured them both out then grabbed the pot from the coffeemaker and poured that coffee down the drain as well. He rinsed them all out and left them in the sink. “Sorry about that.”

  “I don’t think anything you did caused that,” I replied, the bitter taste lingering in my mouth.

  He smiled slightly as he stared out the kitchen window. After a few minutes, he took a deep breath, exhaled sharply, and turned to look at me. “I guess it’s time to go home then.”

  “I guess so. Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything you need?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not now.”

  “Okay then,” I said, getting up. I walked over to him and gave him a quick hug. “If you think of anything, let me know. You know where to find me.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Seriously, Matty, I know I didn’t want to ask anybody for anything those first few days, but I needed the help. There’s a lot to take care of. Just ask.”

  He smiled sadly. “You know, you’re the only person who still calls me Matty.”

  “You’re the only person who still calls me Franny.”